Robust automatic breast and pectoral muscle segmentation from scanned mammograms

Breast skin–air interface and pectoral muscle segmentation are usually first steps in all CAD applications on scanned as well as digital mammograms. Breast skin–air interface segmentation is much more difficult task when performed on scanned mammograms than on digital mammograms. In case of pectoral muscle segmentation, segmentation difficulty of analog and digital mammograms is usually similar. In this paper we present adaptive contrast enhancement method for breast skin–air interface detection which combines usage of adaptive histogram equalization method on small region of interest which contains actual edge and edge detection operators. Pectoral muscle detection method uses combination of contrast enhancement using adaptive histogram equalization and polynomial curvature estimation on selected region of interest. This method makes segmentation of very low contrast pectoral muscle areas possible because of estimation used to segment areas which have lower contrast difference than detection threshold.

► We have presented a method for automatic mammogram preprocessing.
► We have proposed an adaptive threshold algorithm for breast tissue segmentation.
► Adaptive algorithm for pectoral muscle region-of-interest detection was developed.
► Numerical method for pectoral muscle estimation has been developed.
► Numerical comparison of automatic versus manual segmentation was conducted.